


from my heart and from my hand

by ficfucker



Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: Denial of Feelings, Domestic Fluff, First Time, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Masturbation in Shower, Roommates to lovers, Trans Male Character, actually way softer than i meant it to be, bottom herbert, heavily implied virgin herbert west, more like flash burn lol, slow burn (?), top dan, trans!herbert west
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:49:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23251222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ficfucker/pseuds/ficfucker
Summary: oh my god they were roommates...
Relationships: Daniel Cain/Herbert West
Comments: 9
Kudos: 138





	from my heart and from my hand

**Author's Note:**

> uh this is rlly messy and directionless and embarrassing but  
> it got too long to just sit in drafts  
> here u go  
> oh title is from weird science, naturally

It starts with embalming chemicals. 

Herbert goes over to one of the small cabinets pushed against the basement wall and squats down, looking for his bottle of Formalin. 

He's been deeply interested in how embalming fluids interact with his reagent. Preservative formaldehyde, water conditioner, phenol, cell conditioner, anti-edmics, anything he can get his hands on, either through thievery or legal purchase. He wants to compare the differences in a fully embalmed body and an untouched specimen, how they react, how large of a dose they require to come back. 

"Here it is," he hums to himself. 

Daniel is still busy removing the starting corpses from the fridge: frogs. Small, easy to obtain, easy to observe the organs and their condition. 

Herbert stands up and returns to his work desk, setting the bottle down and going to unscrew it. The small cap lid doesn't give. 

"Need some help?" 

Herbert scowls and waves a dismissive hand in Dan's direction. "Nonsense," he mutters. He rolls up his coat sleeves and cradles the glass container into the crook of his bent elbow, twisting with all the force in his right arm. 

Little blue veins bloom, bulging, in his hands and wrists. 

Dan snickers. "Easy there. You'll pop a blood vessel." 

Herbert exhales and gives the bottle one more good try, his palm slipping off the top and almost dropping the damn thing. "Oh, Christ," he huffs, shoving the Formalin at Dan. "You do it then." 

Dan takes the bottle and clamps his hand down over it, breathing out as he twists the lid off with one tight, hard spin. "There you go." Dan sets it on the table. 

Herbert looks away and fixes his cuffs, trying to seem unbothered at how easily Dan has gotten the lid off. "What use is bottling something so tight as it won't be possible to open in time of need? Morticians run a tight ship you know," he grumbles. "Every minute a stiff lies on the slab, it's decomposing, even in optimal, chilled temperatures." 

Dan has returned to laying out the trays of frogs, all belly up so their pale undersides are still and bare. "Oh, probably so kids won't get into the stuff. Formaldehyde doesn't seem like it'd do much good to the living." 

Herbert adjusts his glasses. He's annoyed. 

Not at the fact that Dan can twist the top off bottles he can't, but rather, at what it showed of Dan. The way his lean arms had gone taut under his thin, white lab coat. How his brow furrowed with determined concentration. How the connective bones in his hand became etched and apparent at the strain. 

He hates the unwelcome feeling of attraction he felt. 

"Formalin," Herbert corrects after a moment. 

"Huh?" 

Herbert slices his eyes down to slits and squints harshly at Dan. "Formalin. You said formaldehyde." 

Dan shrugs in that kiddish way of his, smiling boyishly as he sets out the last of the six frogs they've prepared for this experiment. "Formalin is just a type of formaldehyde, isn't it?" 

Herbert frowns. He's still thinking about the wonderful swell of Dan's lean arms. "It's 37% aqueous formaldehyde, for preservation, not embalming. There's a stark difference." 

"Sure. Alright." 

“And your argument… How many morticians allow children into their labs? And unsupervised as to need a safety to keep them from ingesting embalming liquids?”

The next time it happens, it's when they're in the living room, post-basement. 

It's taken Dan some months, but he's finally coaxed Herbert from hiding like gaining the trust of a street mutt. They'll watch movies together or the evening news. Dan goes to Blockbuster and comes home with stacks of VHS tapes, sometimes even getting his hands on some older scientific documentaries he has access to for being a med student. 

Herbert's on his side of the couch, toeing off his shoes, when Dan comes in with two bowls of popcorn. He sets one by Herbert's thigh then settles himself in. 

"Why two?" Herbert asks. 

"Unbuttered for you. You made all that fuss last time about oh, what was it? The damage cholesterol and excessive fat can do to healthy, viral arteries?" 

Herbert almost feels himself blushing and he turns his head towards the television set, which is still running through opening credits. "Someone like yourself, with ample knowledge of nutrition and basic biology, I'd assume you'd take the same stance." 

Dan laughs and reaches his hand into his bowl, tossing a fistful of popcorn into his mouth. His fingers shine with grease in the dim blue light the television casts. "A little bit of popcorn isn't gonna send me into cardiac arrest, Herb." 

Herbert rolls his eyes, but he picks up a single tuft of popcorn and eats it, silent. Had Dan really remembered such a small detail? Herbert hadn't spun out and ranted like a madman, it had simply been a small complaint last time they had popcorn together. 

Popcorn butter is particularly disgusting to Herbert, the unnatural yellow dye, the way it makes the roof of his mouth feel waxy, like he's been eating the grime from the bottom of a lake. 

Something warms inside him, Dan having remembered and gone through the trouble of popping two kinds, having separate bowls. 

What a silly thing to be thankful for! 

But Herbert has never really had close ties. Any small gesture, when shown by someone trusted, feels so radical when you've never received such a thing before. 

"Is that a common practice?" Herbert asks, unprompted. 

"What's that?" 

Herbert feels himself getting redder in the face, grateful for the low light in the room, the shadows drawn over him. "Preparing foods specifically for a roommate. To accommodate as such." 

Dan wrinkles his brow and smiles a small, curling smile, cocking his head slightly to the side. "What, like the popcorn?" he asks, his voice light.

Herbert nods, short and clipped. 

"Uh, sure. Sometimes. Like uh, Meg… she didn't eat meat for the most part so when we got pizza, I'd make sure she got half cheese or mushroom or something." 

"I see." 

Herbert finds himself thinking of Dan absently. When Dan's off to classes and Herbert's tucked away in the basement, injecting methanol into the tissue of dead frogs and timing reagent reactions. When he's scrubbing his hands clean of the gummy viscera that somehow always manages to get into his gloves. When he's in the shower, trying and failing to smell like anything other than death. 

The shower daydreaming is particularly dangerous. 

Herbert hardly considers himself a sexual creature, and not just because of his gender or his dysphoria, but because he's not looking to mate with anyone. Children are certainly not an asset he’s looking to obtain. Sex seems mundane and distracting, never catching much interest, even when testosterone was supposed to get him hot as a teenage boy. 

Somehow, though, Herbert's become infected with little, passing thoughts. Not even terribly lewd ones, just small things that plague him. 

He turns the heat up on the showerhead and leans against the cool tile of the stall wall so his body is misted with the warm spray. Shiny droplets dew the fine, dark hair of his chest. 

All this because Dan can open bottles of Formalin. All this because Dan thought to make him unbuttered popcorn. 

Herbert crawls a hand down his stomach, over his pubic bone, down to his t-dick, which is swelling with pitiful interest. 

He likes Dan's… largeness. Dan's… kindness. His stupid, goofy smile. His soft, sympathetic eyes. The firm cut of his jaw. The ridiculous white tank tops he wears to bed.

Herbert jerks himself silently, his teeth catching his bottom lip. 

He could be vocal if he wanted, Dan's not home, but he's already embarrassed enough. A moan, even when he's alone, would mortify him. 

His thighs tense. Herbert hasn’t properly masturbated in what must be more than two weeks, often just tugging his dick before bed every so often to keep himself from getting easily irritated. For him, masturbation is a form of cleansing. 

Not this time, however. 

This time, he’s thinking about Daniel Cain. Having Dan sprawled over him, mouths working together. To have Dan untuck his shirt for him, snake off his tie. About the actual sex, Herbert’s mind blanks a bit, goes hazy when he tries to imagine Dan and him doing anything other than frottage. 

That satisfies more than enough; the thought of grinding and humping. 

Herbert arches his back and climaxes, a low, huffing sound escaping his mouth as his dick leaps between his thumb and forefinger, throbbing off-beat to his heart. He runs his hand under the jet of water, eyes still closed. He sucks in a rattling breath. His naked back is sticking damply to the wall of the shower. 

Herbert splashes his face under the water, runs a hand from his brow to his chin, and turns the faucet off. He steps out and towels down, his face smudged and ghostly in the fogged mirror. Pink tinted. 

The front door unlatches. Dan calls, “Herb? I got take-out!”

Herbert fumbles for his glasses on the edge of the sink. “Uhm. In the bathroom!”

There’s the distance noise of things being set down and then Dan’s feet padding down the hallway. “The bathroom? You better not be putting things in the bath again, I already told you. No experiments upstairs.”

“No! Nothing of the sort. I was… showering.”

Dan snorts, sounding amused. “Showering? At this time of day?”

“Oh, pardon me for not wanting to track the chemical stench of Cidex all over the house.”

“Herbert West? Being considerate? Color me shocked!”

Herbert’s the most flustered he’s felt in his life as he jumps back into his slacks, buttoning his shirt frantically. “Don’t assume it’s a gesture solely on your behalf. I live up here as well.” Herbert gets on his socks and swings open the bathroom door and nearly bumps into Dan’s chest.

He hadn’t expected him to be so close, not leaning in the doorway like he is.

“Whoa there. Nothin’s on fire. Cool the jets.” 

Herbert goes red again and he hopes Dan thinks it’s from the shower, flush from the warm water. “I just have a lot of work to return to,” he mutters. He can’t make eye contact. “I’ll be up in a moment.”

And with that, Herbert zips down to the basement to pretend busy with wiping down all surfaces. He scolds himself silently for the whole situation. 

The routine becomes the following: Herbert jerks off in his bedroom or the shower, always thinking of Dan. He tells himself it's a one time thing then goes about his day. Reanimate. Study. Be sure not to accidentally brush hands or bump into Dan at all costs. Absolutely no escalation of this passing infatuation. Watch a movie or the news, pushed as far away on the couch as he can get. Sleep. 

Try not to dream of Dan. 

All the mental strain, the opposite magnet pushing to keep his feelings for Dan at bay, exhausts Herbert. 

Herbert's a weird guy – that's an understatement, but recently, Dan feels like he's been acting even more strange than usual. If that's possible. 

Whenever Dan's within ten feet of him, he slinks around like a feral cat, tail stiff with concern, his dark eyes ping-ponging nervously. 

Even while reanimating, no doubt Herbert's favorite part of the scientific process, he keeps his shoulders hunched to his ears. His hands hide in his pockets all times he's not holding a syringe. He only gives Dan sideways looks from the corners of his eyes. 

Dan assumes it's stress. The weight of playing God and being dissatisfied with results. 

He sets down a bottle of cell conditioner and Herbert startles, blinking up at Dan with beady, reptilian eyes. 

"Hey, uh, how about we call it quits, huh?" he offers with a small, gentle smile. Coaxing. 

"Quits?" Herbert scoffs. "We still have four control specimens to compare and several tapes to transcribe into secure documents." 

Dan takes a single step closer and Herbert shrinks back more, but stays in range so that Dan can place a hand soothingly to his shoulder. 

"Herb," he chirps. "It's Friday. Why don't we enjoy the weekend for once?" 

Herbert sneers and pulls away. He puts his heels together and juts his chin out defiantly. He pushes his glasses up his nose with two fingers. "The day of the week is irrelevant. Decomposition does not wait on the human concept of weekends. We'd lose all this precious progress." 

Dan sighs. "Precious progress? Any embalming fluid slows the reanimation progress by a single minute for every 5 mLs. It's been perfectly linear." 

Herbert knits his brow, almost looks pouty. 

Dan's heart flutters. Why does he think that's cute?

"Fine," Herbert bites. "We'll store these in the freezer. Lower the temperature by at least ten degrees. If internal ice crystals form larger than 2 centimeters…" 

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll have my head. Got it." Dan starts to gather up the silver trays. "You'll thank me, you know. Getting you out of the basement." 

Herbert gets the Cidex to sanitize the tables, his mouth still pinched. "Oh, and do what exactly? Eat pizza and prank call the neighbors?" 

Dan beams, his arms all full of dead frogs. "See! Now you're gettin' it."

Herbert grumbles something to himself and wipes down the tables, tossing the rags in the trash. He starts to shuck off his lab coat and Dan pauses to watch him. 

"What?" 

It's Dan's turn to startle. He closes the fridge with his shoe and says, "Nothing! Just thinking about what type of pizza to order." 

Herbert, nonplussed, answers simply, "Mushroom." 

Herbert doesn't know what classifies as a date. He's not privy to all the different types of mating dances humans perform, but sitting on the couch with a slice of mushroom pizza in his lap, he thinks this might be one. 

A date night. 

Dan's talked him into it, retiring early from the lab and "relaxing" with a horror movie, pizza Dan had ordered. 

"Detached flesh wouldn't keep that way," Herbert comments quietly, voice flat. 

"What's that?" Dan's got a mouthful of cheese and bread and sauce. 

Herbert wrinkles his nose, turns his attention back to the screen. Back to the chainsaw-wielding maniac. "Human skin. It needs to be oiled almost daily or it becomes putrid, becomes mottled. Even mummified if it's exposed to dry conditions." 

Dan swallows and smiling, soft as silk, says, "It's a movie, Herbert. It's not meant to be true to fact." 

Instead of feeling annoyed, Herbert feels… amused. He draws his knife through his pizza, cutting off a small triangular piece. "It's based on real events, though." 

"Ed Gein, yeah." 

Herbert nods, chews his bite before speaking. "Skins have to be oiled or they shrink down and crack. Like pork rinds. Or they bloat up like beached whales and maggots infest them within days." 

Dan sticks his tongue out, laughs. "Jeez. I should've known better than to order out with you. Bad movie choice." 

Herbert shrugs. "You should have the stomach for it by now." 

Dan chuckles, shakes his head. He sets his paper plate on the coffee table, the puddle of grease in the center sogging it thin. "It's normal to not want to eat while talking about decay." 

They're both quiet for a minute. 

The human-masked man on screen is bumbling around, someone's screaming. 

Herbert watches Dan from his peripheral vision: him curling up onto the couch, pulling a blanket over his lap. Herbert wishes enviously he was coddled up beside him and the thought disgusts him enough that he forces his mind to switch over. 

"Mobsters used to splash cologne on the walls while dismembering hits because of how foul the smell was," Herbert pipes up. "But morticians refuse to mask it. You have to get used to the smell, otherwise you'll never adjust and you won't survive the profession." 

"Is that all you think about? Dying and all the ways we deal with it?" 

Herbert feels embarrassed again, like he's a child being accused of breaking a vase. "What more is there to life." His tone is clipped. 

Something as pretentious as eating pizza with a fork and knife, in a button up shirt and necktie no less, should not be as adorable as Dan thinks it is. 

That seems like a common train of thought lately. Inexplicable moments where Dan catches himself admiring Herbert then wondering where on earth the thought even came from. 

Herbert thoughtfully chewing the end of a pencil. Herbert lining up his beakers and tubes in perfect, soldier rows. Herbert taking his small, bird-like bites of food. 

How are you supposed to make a move on a man so clinical and stoic? 

Herbert lays in bed. His eyes are unfixed on the fuzzy ceiling, glasses off and set safely aside for the night. 

He feels too frenzied and foolish to jerk off. 

He thinks about the frogs in the refrigerator downstairs. 

He thinks about Daniel Cain and how he wants to get in his lap when they watch movies together, even stupid movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

Herbert has no explanation for why he desires any of that and it frustrates him to no end. 

Dan lays in bed. He's on his side, a hand tucked under his head. 

He remembers having one class in high school on behaviorism and human nature. His teacher was blatantly homophobic and told the class that homosexuality was only ever the result of pressured and desperate groups. Animals in cages would resort to homosexual acts if they were all the same sex, but never in the wild, never when there were heterosexual options. 

Hens would learn to crow in flocks that lacked roosters. Animals would hump each other mindlessly if no females were available and only due to their drive to mate that couldn't be quelled, not because they desired males. 

Dan wonders if that's what gotten into him lately, his thinking Herbert's cute. 

He's been with guys a few times before, but he's always leaned more towards women. 

It got complicated, being half closeted and afraid of what backlash might come of it if any word got out. 

And now with Herbert in his life, Dan's feeling those feelings again. 

Wanting to go right up to him and kiss him full on the mouth. 

Is it because Dan and Herbert are cooped up together and he's misplaced a feeling? Or is it genuine? 

Herbert's already in the kitchen when Dan gets up. He's dressed neatly in his tie and slacks, black socks but no shoes. He's at the oven, turned away so Dan can't see his face. 

Dan yawns and stretches, mumbling a sleepy-voiced, "Good morning." 

"Mm. Yes. Morning." 

"Up early." Dan takes a seat at the table, runs a hand through his unkempt hair. 

"You put me to bed early. My sleep schedule isn't accustomed to sleeping that long." 

"Yeah, well, bet it felt nice, didn't it? Actually resting." 

Herbert doesn't answer. Rather, he goes to the sink and fills one of Dan's plastic measuring cups until the water is level to the highest red increment line. 

It hits Dan suddenly. 

"Are you… cooking?" 

Herbert turns around, face blank as a slate. His hair isn't as uniform as he usually keeps it despite his clothes being all in order and Dan's heart gets mushy on him instantly. 

"Yes. Pancakes. Insufferable things." 

"Oh," Dan chirps, surprised. 

The most Herbert ever cooks for himself is a bagel in the morning, sometimes pasta for dinner. A turkey sandwich with lettuce and nothing else. A muffin. Food doesn't seem to be Herbert's corner at all, viewed, like most things, as a menial need, not a thing to be enjoyed. Relatively healthy choices: grains, wheats, carbohydrates, lean meats, but boring ones, easy items. 

Never anything as exciting as pancakes. 

"You know I have a hot plate, right?" 

Herbert pours the water into an already messy bowl of lumpy batter, then tips the box of flour, which poofs up white clouds in his face. He stirs vigorously with a long wooden spoon. "I'm aware." 

Dan chuckles to himself. 

Herbert's brought up his Bunsen burner and with a metal clamp to support it, placed a cast iron skillet over the spout of low flame. It's incredibly rudimentary, barbaric almost. 

"What's got you in the mood for pancakes?" 

"You should've been a professional investigating officer, Dan, really, you have a knack for it," Herbert snips. Herbert spoons some batter into the skillet and softer, adds, "You bought pizza. I assumed it's what most would consider fair." 

Dan wonders, dreamily, stunned, if he's still asleep. Or if he's been somehow shuttled to an alternate universe, one where Herbert West is considerate. One where Herbert West cooks pancakes in his socks and his messy hair in the mornings. 

"Shit," Herbert hisses to himself. He tries to flip the pancake he's got in the pan but it's not solid enough and it splits in half before his spatula can even support it. 

"Here, let me help." 

"No, no, I've got it." 

Dan smiles, knowing Herbert can't see him from his spot at the table. "Do you?" he teases. 

"Well, this is better progress than the first batch," he grouches. "I'm showing improvement, at the very least." 

"Oh, so there was an attempt before this one." 

Herbert unclamps the skillet and scrapes the half-cooked, mealy pancake mush onto a plate. He turns to look at Dan, pointing his spatula in the direction of the trash. A drop of batter drips to the floor. "First the pan's too hot and they go black on the underside. Now I adjust the heat and they crumble to bits." 

Dan laughs, can't help himself, even when Herbert's face pinches up with annoyance. "Okay, let me help you." He gets up and even as Herbert starts to voice protest, he allows Dan to take the spatula. 

He clamps the skillet into place with Herbert's little mad scientist set up. 

"Dump a bit of batter in. Whoa, whoa, there. Yeah, that's good." 

Herbert watches, standing to the left of Dan with curious, impatient eyes. He looks like a student attending a lecture. 

"You have the heat right. Just wait until the top starts to bubble, then they're safe to flip." 

Herbert watches silently. 

The pancake becomes almost craterous with pop marks and Herbert says, anxiously, "It's going to burn, Daniel." 

"Not yet. Wait until the edge starts to brown." 

When it's time, Dan flips the cake and it's perfectly tanned and smooth on the underside. "See?" Dan beams down at Herbert, who's still glued to his side. 

Herbert nods, his face void of any emotion, though his eyes seem animated. He holds out a fresh plate and Dan scoops the pancake onto it. 

"Here. You try." Dan spoons in another dollop of batter, circles it out to the right size. He steps back and allows Herbert to take his place. 

Herbert holds the spatula like a lecturing stick, his brow determined as the batter cooks. 

"Now?" 

"Nope." 

"This one's going to burn," Herbert insists. 

"The last one didn't, did it?" 

Herbert sticks his bottom lip out. "Products vary. Tests with too many variables can't be compared." 

Dan smiles and steps up behind Herbert, saying, "Here. Now." 

Without much thought to it, Dan takes Herbert gently by the wrist and directs the spatula under the pancake, turns his arm so it flips without breaking or hitting the edge of the pan. 

Herbert's unmoving against his front. They're close enough that Dan can hear him breathing. 

"There," Dan says, just to say something. He lets go of Herbert and takes a step back. "You made a perfect pancake." 

Herbert doesn't say anything, just watches the skillet intently. His cheeks seem rosy, but Dan assumes it’s wishful thinking on his part.

Dan takes his plate over to the table, sets it down, and goes to the fridge for butter and syrup. He sits and knives out a pat of butter then waits for Herbert to join him. 

He does. He sits and Dan passes him the butter. 

"Thank you for breakfast," Dan says after his first bite. 

"You cooked them both," Herbert replies flatly. He's cutting his into tiny, minced squares. 

"You set up the pan and made the batter." 

For once in his life, Herbert doesn't argue.

“Next time,” Dan says, “we can do chocolate chips.” 

“Dark chocolate,” Herbert says. He’s taking dainty, thoughtful bites. “Antioxidants, lowers blood pressure.”

Dan smiles and rests his chin on his knuckles, probably looking as lovestruck as he feels. “I thought you didn’t care about food.”

“I don’t care about the act of eating. If I could go without needing to, I would. I am, however, mindful of what enters my body.”

Dan could so easily turn an innuendo here, flirt with him, but Herbert is so unpredictable and touchy, he just smiles and nods and eats his pancake.

As soon as Dan’s left to go grocery shopping, Herbert locks himself in the bathroom, strips nude, and stands himself under the warm thunder of the shower. He sighs aloud, his shoulders drooping contently. 

He could hardly get through breakfast, buzzing from the contact that Dan initiated. Dan’s long fingers curled around his slender wrist. Dan’s large frame pressed against him. The bizarre human warmth that seeped through Dan’s thin sleep clothes. Nothing like a corpse. Dan's breath just barely gusting past his ear when Dan instructed him.

Herbert’s t-dick had stood at attention almost immediately. 

Now in the shower, pressed against the wall, he slides both hands down his thighs, glides one up to eagerly stroke his manhood. With his other, he walks it up to his chest. He tweaks his nipple, which isn’t as sensitive as it used to be, some nerves severed from surgery, but it still sends a jolt through him. 

He’s never jerked off this often before, never with such fervor. 

Herbert allows himself a whimper.

He squirms and a moan escapes. A quivery, slippery, “Dan…,” trembles under the rushing water. His slit is slick with arousal, makes his thighs shiny. 

Herbert thinks of Dan, Dan, Dan until he can’t think of anything at all.

Dan scolds himself as he fishes out his keys and unlocks the front door. Part way to the market and he realized only then he’d forgotten his list at home. Herbert had added to it a few things. Dark chocolate, fresh lettuce, a loaf of wheat bread. 

Dan steps in, humming, “Forgot the list,” in case Herbert’s around to hear. 

He finds the list where he left it on the table and having thought Herbert had for sure slunk down to the laboratory to get his hands back into work, Dan pauses when he hears running water.

He walks light and curious down the hall, stopping outside the bathroom door. 

What’s with Herbert and his sudden schedule shifts?

Then Dan hears it.

His name, faintly, behind the wall of the water hitting tile. 

“Dan… N-uh, Oh, Daniel…!” 

Certainly not cries for help. No mistaking what Herbert must be doing in the shower.

Dan flushes fiercely red, his ears hot coals, and he wheels around, feeling dirty and perverted, but also, beneath that layer, giddy and validated. He steps out the door, sure to twist the knob so it doesn’t sound when it shuts. He fumbles to get his car keys. 

At the first stop sign he reaches, Dan presses both palms to his eyes until he sees sparks, stars swimming into his vision. 

“Jesus Christ, Herbert West,” he whispers to himself, turning left. “I can’t believe it…’ 

Herbert tries to keep busy post shower. He mixes fresh batches of serum. He painstakingly transcibes his tapes into notebooks. He observes his embalmed group and control group and records the results. 

His mind is pathetically trained on Dan. On this morning and the night before. The past couple weeks spent masturbating and yearning. 

He slumps down in a chair and decides he’ll have to do the only thing he can: confess to Dan his infatuation and ask that he excuses it until it passes. 

Because certainly… it will pass.

Dan sets down his sack of groceries and calls down to Herbert, “I got you what you asked for off the list!” then steps back outside to get the last bag from his car.

When he comes back in, Herbert’s in a chair on his knees sticking his nose into the bag. 

Dan watches him, setting down the bag some inches away, then says, “Herb…” in a tone that makes Herbert whip his head up at attention.

“Yes?” 

Dan swallows. Their eye contact is laser intense. “I think we should… talk. Something happened.”

Herbert is silent and unblinking. 

Dan rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, squirming under Herbert’s clinical gaze. “I don’t know how to say this without embarrassing you…”

Herbert’s brow tightens and his upper lip seems to shrink back. “Embarrass me?”

Dan pauses for a long moment, just looking at Herbert, his eyes so round behind his silver frames. He sighs from his nose and crosses around the table so he’s standing directly in front of Herbert who’s still perched in his chair, dropping his already short stature a few good inches more. 

“Dan…,” Herbert whispers lowly. 

And then Dan goes in for the dumb movie moment. He leans down, dropping his hands to Herbert’s alert shoulders, and kisses him softly on the mouth. Herbert doesn’t close his eyes. Herbert doesn’t even kiss back and panic rings an alarm in Dan’s head that he’s misread the situation, maybe their whole dynamic. 

When he pulls away, Herbert is still looking at him and as soon as he opens his mouth, Herbert asks, “What prompted that?”

Dan makes a deflated noise. “You. I. Oh lord, Herbert.”

Herbert’s eyes go rounder. 

Dan groans. “I…! I heard you jerking off in the shower today. Saying my name.” 

The faint blush on Herbert’s cheeks flames into a deep scarlet, dark cherry red. “You…”

Dan nods. 

A rattling breath shudders from Herbert’s flaring nostrils. “You… had left the house by then.”

“I came back, I forgot the shopping list.”

Herbert’s eyebrows go up. His pupils seem frozen. “I see,” is all he says. 

“Look, Herb, I didn’t mean to embarrass you, like I said. And-and I thought you wanted this because, well, from what-”

Herbert steps back, unfolding his legs from underneath himself, and stands so the chair is between them. “It won’t happen again, I assure you.”

Dan flinches, confused. “It won’t… What?” 

“Impolite. Beyond inappropriate,” Herbert mutters.

Dan quite literally cannot control the laugh that punches out of him. “Inappropriate? Herbert, you reanimate the dead, for Christ’s sake! Since when has being proper in the workplace ever concerned you?”

Herbert scowls, crosses his arms, but the deep blush of his face makes both actions far less venomous than they typically appear. 

“Okay. Listen. Unless I’m completely mistaken and misreading this, let’s just… let’s see where things go between us, okay?” 

Herbert seems to consider it. 

“Okay?” Dan repeats, almost pleading. 

“Fine,” Herbert says neutrally. He juts out his hand and Dan looks down at the outstretched offer, cocking his head, puzzled. 

“Shake.” 

And Dan’s not sure why, but he shakes Herbert’s hand like they’ve just settled a sale or a business pitch. 

They don’t discuss it further. Herbert makes himself a wheat, turkey, and lettuce sandwich and holes up in the basement to eat it alone. Dan, struck dumb, puts the rest of the groceries away alone in silence. 

Herbert hadn’t kissed back, but Herbert also hadn’t bitten his nose off. 

The best option looks to be giving Herbert his space. To process. 

Stacking away cans of soup, Dan thinks, maybe sadly, he could wait however long it takes for Herbert to come around. 

Herbert, in his sexual and romantic panic, avoids Dan like a sparrow who’s just escaped an encounter with a house cat. It’s extreme, but Herbert has never kept a friendship this long, let alone to start a relationship. 

They never live long enough, Herbert thinks bitterly as he fills a syringe with serum. 

Herbert continues with his reanimation. Records the seconds. Compares embalming liquids to fresh and natural deaths. 

Dan’s right. 

Any embalming fluid slows the reanimation progress by a single minute for every 5 mLs. Perfectly linear.

Herbert's in shock, mostly. Mortified that Dan came in and that he was loud enough to be heard. Reeling from the fact that Dan must, in some way, reciprocate the desire, whether strictly sexual or wanting something romantic from it. 

He sulks around the basement until it's the usual time he and Dan will retire to the living room. 

He creeps silently up the stairs. 

Dan's there, knelt down in front of the VCR, in grey sweats and his white Nike shirt. 

Dan turns around his heels with the intention of calling down to Herbert to tell him he ought to come up, but Herbert's right there, alit blue with his wide eyes fixated on him. Dan, startled, off balances and lands on his ass. 

"Jesus, Herb, you scared me!" he laughs. "I didn't hear you come up." 

Herbert squints then says, "We should move on from amphibians. Move back to mammals."

"Oh. Okay." 

"You were correct," Hebert bites out. "About the relation between embalming chemicals and reagent." 

Dan gets up, crosses the room, and sits on his side of the couch. "Are you admitting I was right about something?" 

Herbert sneers. He's still just standing there, posture straight as a rail spike. "I do value your scientific input, Dan. Why else would I select you as a partner if I thought you were incapable of contributing?" he asks, voice cold. 

Dan's thinking of a response when Herbert comes over to him and, wordlessly, sits in his lap. All thought evacuates Dan's head immediately.

He's seated so they're both facing the television and Dan, hesitantly, wraps his arms around Herbert's middle. 

"Give a guy warning next time," Dan laughs in a hush as the movie starts up. 

Herbert replies, "You gave no warning earlier today." 

Dan wants to cuddle right up to Herbert, nose his face into his hair, tuck his chin into his shoulder, but the closeness is stiff. Herbert's not relaxed into him at all. Dan thinks Herbert's trembling ever so slightly in his arms, vibrating just beneath the skin. 

The VCR whirs. An older man's voice introduces the film, which is a fairly dated autopsy from the 70s Dan's borrowed from the hospital, picked with Herbert in mind since he didn't seem to like horror much. Three bodies lie under their shrouds with a doctor standing behind the slabs, in clean scrubs and a cloth face mask. 

"An autopsy?" Herbert asks. 

"Mhm. Hospital archives had a few to pick from." 

Dan fidgets with Herbert's tie. 

A bone saw goes through the skull cap. The flesh of the head is pulled up in a long red flap, the brain deposited into a basin. 

"Do you typically watch autopsies with your partners?" 

Dan hums, amused. "Not usually. Not unless we're studying." 

"Oh, is that what you're doing? Studying." 

Dan braves the unknown and nuzzles his chin into Herbert's neck. He smells sharp and surgical, of bleach and disinfectant. "I could be, if that's what you want from me," he murmurs. 

Herbert relaxes under his touch, only a fraction, but his skin warms, the pulse point in his neck quickening. "Your attempt at seduction is… childish," he mumbles. 

Dan grins, gives him a small, playful kiss on his bare throat. He's still toying with Herbert's necktie. "I'd like to see you do better." 

Herbert makes a noise and adjusts himself, leaning back into Dan's arms. "You push your luck, Cain." 

The chest is sectioned into a T from the clavicle to the navel and opened in long pulls. The yellow fat of the deceased looks like the foam stuffing in certain types of couch cushions. 

"I know," Dan whispers. He is lightheaded with relief and excitement. He's holding Herbert West and not because they're clinging to the other, all spattered in blood. 

They watch the autopsy two bodies through, Herbert commenting about outdated tools and better techniques, criticizing the doctor at about every turn. Dan listens, tickled at how annoyed Herbert can be over such small things. 

Two bodies through and Herbert's drooping with sleep. 

Dan slides his glasses off his nose and Herbert's still awake enough that he attempts to protest. Dan hushes him, presses a soft kiss to his temple. 

Herbert uncoils more and more until he's totally out, asleep in Dan's arms just as the doctor on screen peels open the last chest cavity. 

Dan finishes through until the movie goes black, the television goes blue, and the tape begins to auto-rewind. He's rubbing his thumb over the back of Herbert's hand. 

The tape clicks, fully rewound. 

Dan hefts Herbert up carefully, cradling him bridal style, palm to his back to keep him from drooping. He carries Herbert to his room and sets him down in his bed. Dan rolls off Herbert's socks, undoes Herbert's tie. He snakes off his belt. He gently shimmers Herbert out of his slacks and leaves everything nearly folded by the foot of the bed, then draws a blanket over him. 

Herbert, without his glasses, no tie noosed around him, his face softened by slumber, looks young and approachable. 

Dan closes the door gently and turns off the television and goes to his own room and goes to sleep. 

The routine becomes the following: Dan and Hebert work together in the lab. Dan, despite his desire to, never tries to initiate anything while in the basement. In the mornings, Hebert tries his hand at cooking whenever he's up before Dan is. 

Dan sits happily through plates of too-gooey scrambled eggs and bowls of over-cinnamoned oatmeal and arguably the worst attempt at French toast he's ever eaten. 

Dan asks for seconds. He kisses Herbert and Herbert complains about his coffee-mouth.

They watch movies and news and documentaries each night. Herbert sits in Dan's lap or curled up to his side under a blanket together. They kiss and Herbert starts to initiate at times, but they don't go much further. 

Dan doesn't push and after cuddling on the couch, they retire to separate rooms.

After several weeks of this cycle, Herbert appears in Dan's doorway. 

"I want to have sex with you," he says, absolutely no emotion to his voice. 

Dan, who's shirtless and in only pajama bottoms, is already sitting up in bed. He says, "Okay," because he wants that, too.

Herbert walks over to him and lingers by the edge of the bed, looking at Dan with a pinched expression of uncertainty. Like he's considering an equation he can't solve. 

Dan reaches out and touches his elbow, rubs his arm to try and soothe him. 

Herbert exhales and undoes his belt. His movements are doctorly. He steps out of them then looks back to Dan with blank eyes. It's a funny thing, how clinical he's being, and the fact that he's taken his pants off first rather than his shirt. 

He stands there in his black briefs a moment, then says, "Dan…," in the timidest voice to ever come out of him. 

Dan squeezes his arm again, swipes his thumb over his wrist. "I don't want you to do this if you're not ready. If you feel pressured–" 

"I don't feel pressured," Herbert cuts him off. "I'm not some blushing teenage virgin." 

Herbert turns his hand over so he's got Dan by the wrist and he guides him, palm up, to his groin. Dan cups him, the warmth between his legs and without thinking, Dan’s eyebrows go together in confusion. 

There's a surprising lack of a phallus. 

Dan opens his mouth to say something, but Herbert beats him to it with, "I'm transsexual."

"Okay. Uh." 

"If that's somehow an issue, react honestly," Hebert says and his voice is both wavering and frigidly cold. Trying not to quiver under Dan's touch. Trying not to show how frightened he is by exposing himself as vulnerable. Trying not to let his nervousness well over the dam of indifference and cruelness he's built as protection. 

"No…! No, Herb, oh, it's not an issue at all." Dan walks his hand to Herbert's thigh, strokes him with a single finger. 

A breath rattles out of him. 

"Uhm." Dan has to say something because the silence is too heavy. "I treated a transsexual before. At the hospital. A lady. She uh, she was having problems with blood pressure." 

Blankly, Herbert says, "That's fascinating, Daniel, thank you for sharing." 

Dan wraps his arms around Herbert and scoops him into bed, pressing his face to his stomach and kissing at him over his white button-down. "Really, Herb. I'm serious. It's not an issue." 

Herbert drops his chin down so his nose is in Dan's hair and he inhales. Dan can feel his heart thrumming through him like a train whistling through a tunnel. 

Dan suns his face up at Herbert and Herbert down to kiss him. 

They move slow, with wandering hands, Herbert touching down Dan's chest and arms, Dan undoing the buttons of Herbert's shirt as he presses his tongue into his mouth. Herbert whines, cups Dan's face. Wriggles out of his shirt. Dan kisses down his throat to his chest, soft and dark with fine hairs. Herbert’s breathing is quick and shallow, his hands carding through Dan's hair over and over in jagged, gentle rows. 

“It’s embarrassing,” Herbert mumbles, voice rising an octave as Dan flattens his tongue to Herbert’s nipple.

“What is?”

Herbert huffs, almost pouty, and he drops his chin down again so he speaks into Dan’s hair, “Sexual attraction. For everyone to have a preconception of what I must want or do.”

Dan hums, kisses solemnly the flat plain of Herbert’s sternum. “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to,” he promises.

Herbert kisses oh so softly into Dan’s hair. 

Dan hooks a finger into the hem of Herbert’s briefs and hesitantly inches them down until they’re caught about mid-thigh. Herbert’s chest rises and falls rapidly, chin turned away to avoid eye contact. Dan places a hand to his lower back and with the other, pushes him until he’s completely reclined in bed. His thumbs rest on Herbert’s hips and he kisses between his legs. Kisses the rise of his pubic bone to the swollen shaft of his t-cock to the warm slit below, wet with arousal. He pulls Herbert's underwear the rest of the way off, tosses them aside to the floor. 

“Oh,” Herbert gasps. He seems to consider the noise, no doubt embarrassed, but when Dan kisses him again, he whimpers out another pillowy, “Oh…” 

Dan brushes a hand over him featherlight and says, “Tell me what you want, Herb.”

“For you to fuck me.”

His bluntness makes Dan laugh, but he sits up and opens his bedside drawer, getting out a small tub of Vaseline. He also produces a single, silver-packaged condom, which he unwraps and rolls onto himself once he’s got his sweatpants off. 

Herbert watches him with clear, almost inhuman fascination. That waiting, watching look he gets. He reaches out his hand and says something under his breath, like, “Wait…” and touches Dan’s condomed erection very lightly. He holds it, palm curled to the underside of his shaft, and Dan tries his best not to stutter his hips forward. 

“You make me feel like I’m getting a physical,” Dan jokes in a whisper.

“Good.” And with that, Herbert gives him a confident stroke before dropping his hand away. He lays back in the sheets, but looks uncertain again, embarrassed. 

Dan drags over a pillow and lift’s Herbert by the hips, places it under his ass. “Hey…,” he soothes, dipping a finger in vaseline to spread it over his cock. “There doesn’t need to be… a dynamic here. Sex isn’t a power struggle.”

“I would just like for you to hurry up.”

Dan quirks into a smile and slicks himself over. “In that case…,” he teases. He leans down to kiss Herbert on the mouth as he drags the head of his cock over Herbert’s, then down to his opening.

Herbert shudders a gasp into Dan’s mouth which makes him throb. He gently pushes in and Herbert tenses under him, eyes shut, face all twisted up. 

"Okay?" Dan asks. 

"I'd tell you if it wasn't." Herbert's voice is strained.

Dan continues to push in, slowly, kissing tenderly at Herbert's neck, until he's completely sheathed. Herbert exhales and throws an arm over his flushed face, causing his glasses to sit crookedly over the bridge of his nose. 

Patiently, Dan waits. Herbert kind of squirms and with the hand he's not hiding behind, he touches Dan's hip in a guiding motion, an encouragement. 

Dan rolls his hips shallowly, experimental, and Herbert breathes out at it, his back arching slightly off the mattress. Dan leans down and thrusts again, a little more force this time, and kisses Herbert's arm, murmuring, "What're you hiding for down there?" 

Herbert peeks out at him, flushed, his eyes half hooded under his lashes, and says, "It's… new."

Dan kisses his temple, carefully working up to a moderate pace. "Bad new or good new?" 

"J-Just… odd." 

Dan smiles and groans lowly, trying desperately not to slam into Herbert, to drive into his warmth like his body wants him to. He moves his arm aside, off his face, and it drops limply in the bed before scrambling up to wrap around Dan's neck, keeping him bent over Herbert. Their foreheads touch, are slick with light sweat. 

"Go… faster." 

Dan listens. He has a feeling once Herbert gets a bit more comfortable with him and sexuality as a whole, Herbert will be giving a lot of instruction. It excites him quietly. 

He fixes Herbert's glasses for him. 

Herbert's very quiet other than gasps and shuddering breaths. He's practically breathing into Dan's mouth, which is very claustrophobic, but weirdly hot. Dan kisses him fiercely, biting at his bottom lip. He fucks into him with enough vigor now that there's the very sexual sound of skin hitting skin, the dull slap of it. 

Dan moves a hand down Herbert's stomach to jerk him off, but Herbert seems to realize that's an option and swats Dan's hand away to do it himself. 

A tiny, whimpering moan slips out, right into Dan's mouth. Dan's stomach feels like it's going to drop out. 

"Oh, Danny…," Herbert moans, sounding so bizarrely feminine. 

"Fuck…!" 

Herbert tugs his t-cock while Dan rocks into him. His thighs twitch and tense. "Dan…," he coos. "I'm…" 

Dan makes a gutted noise, feeling Herbert flutter around him. "Go on," he pants. "Want you to for me." 

Herbert arches up off the bed again, his ankles crossed behind Dan's lower back as to keep him deeply in him. His hand gets a bit erratic, his t-cock over sensitive from the attention, the action, and he cums, fingers slipping away from his throbbing manhood. His eyes roll back in his head like a possession and he makes a choked sound, an attempt at Dan's name. 

Dan swoops down and latches onto him in a heated kiss, Herbert clenching tight around him as he climaxes, and he moans into Herbert's mouth. Seeing Herbert come undone like that… It takes only another few seconds before he's cumming, too, into the condom, cock twitching deep inside Hebert. 

"God," Hebert exhales. He sounds like he's just come back down to earth. His breathing is harsh.

Dan slides out, his head dropped to Herbert's chest. He takes the opportunity to turn his face to the side and bite Herbert's neck, suck the soft, pale skin into his mouth so a crushed red mark is left behind. 

"That was rude." 

Dan chuckles, getting up to remove his condom, depose of it in the trash. He goes to his dresser and pulls out a shirt and some jogger shorts. He returns to the edge of the bed and says, "Up."

"Oh, so now you think I'm a doll you can dress up." 

Dan grabs an arm and hoists him upright, pulling the shirt down over him. "You could sleep naked if you'd like." 

Herbert sticks his tongue out and stands to put on the shorts. 

Dan pulls his sweats back on. 

They both get into bed, under the blanket together, and Dan turns Herbert over so he can spoon him. Herbert doesn't protest, just passes his closed glasses to Dan, whose arms are long enough he can set them on the bedside table without having to turn away. 

Dan kisses the back of Herbert's head. "Goodnight, Herb."

"Mm… Night, Daniel."

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! 
> 
> u can find me on tmblr @ficfucker
> 
> kudos & comments appreciated! esp since this is my first reanimator fic lol


End file.
